


but love is not a victory march

by Arya_Silvertongue



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dementia, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moving On, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 16:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17429714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Silvertongue/pseuds/Arya_Silvertongue
Summary: It’s a Friday when Danny dies for his daughter, leaving Grace and Steve to pick up the pieces of a suddenly splintered world.





	but love is not a victory march

**Author's Note:**

> Title was taken from the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. For the purpose of this story, Charles William Williams doesn't exist ;)

 

.

 

 

When her father dies, Gracie is sleeping.

In the end, that’s the only thing she understands. Only thing she can make sense of.

 _Unconscious_ would be a better term, really, if Grace is one of those people who are particular with words. Danno is, though. Her father loves words, and he loves reading, a trait born from having a city librarian for a godmother and developed when he decided that books and boxing is a contradiction he loved wearing like a badge of honor along the corridors of Hoboken Middle School. He enjoys reading her bedtime stories, and finding synonyms for terms she might not have been able to grasp just yet. He is definitely one of those people.

 _Was,_ whispers a small part of her brain. Danno was.

So yeah.

Grace is unconscious when it all happens. The last thing she remembers is putting her phone down her lap after one last goodnight text to Will, followed by an eye roll at her father’s subsequent rant about codependence and high school romance.

She is tired from the party — a classmate’s birthday celebration at Waimanalo — so she figures a quick nap wouldn’t hurt.

_Whatever, Danno._

Funny how little Grace can do, no matter how hard she tries to remember something else, anything else, that she might’ve said to her dad before she closed her eyes.

 

 

.

.

 

 

They don’t call Steve.

It will be a long time before he is able to look at any of them again, at every single one who had the _gall_ , without feeling the raw betrayal that threatened to tip him over when he first found out.

They call Chin. They call Kono. Even Max.

But not Steve.

 

 

.

.

 

 

It’s the smell that tells her she’s in the hospital. Bleached sheets and antimicrobial hand sanitizer.

Grace hates waking up in the hospital. It either means her dad’s hurt and she passed out one of visitor’s chair, or she’s the one confined and the first thing she’ll see when she opens her eyes is her dad’s pinched face and shaking hands. Either way, it’s an unspoken pact between the two of them, ever since she was rushed to the ER due to a bad case of pneumonia when she was five, and Danno’s wobbly smile greeted her the following morning. She returned the favor less than a year later, when she climbed on the bed as her mom called the doctors two nights after Danno’s first proper gunshot wound. Her parents had an argument after that, about stupid risks and dead partners, but Gracie was just glad her dad’s eyes shone when he opened them.

The oxygen tube sticking out of her mouth and all the other lines attached to both her arms tell her she’s it this time, and in a pretty bad condition at that. She mentally prepares for seeing the worse brand of worried face she’s gonna get before she looks up, and immediately falters when it’s her mom she sees first.

A quick sweep of the room reveals to her that it _is_ just her mom, and the nurse who first approached her bed when she first regained consciousness.

Amidst the flurry of more nurses and someone else in a lab coat, Grace tries to crane her neck, to get a better look at her mom who has kept a significant distance between herself and her daughter’s bed. She has a hand over her mouth, and the slight tremor of her shoulders tells Grace she’s crying.

 _I’m fine_ , she wants to call out to her.

The doctor is speaking, and a woman responds, but no one sounds worried and what little of her vitals Grace can understand seems perfectly normal. She wants to reach out to her mom, assure her she’s okay now, she’s awake, but then she catches her mother’s eyes, and the twitching of her hands stop.

She knows that look.

It’s the same one she saw on her classmate Olivia, when her older brother succumbed to cancer two years ago. It’s the shadow that continues to haunt Mrs. Akamu’s face.

It’s the void that took the light from her father’s eyes for months, when Uncle Matty died.

All at once, she remembers the party, the sound of raindrops against the windshield, and everything that keeps Grace tethered snaps. The last thing she hears is her mom’s voice, drowned by the beeping of the heart monitor, before she slips out of consciousness like a diver in free fall.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Every time someone he loves is in danger, Steve falters.

Whether they’re in the hospital, or in the trunk of a car, or on the floor, bleeding right into his hands, there’s always a moment when he cycles through every single stage of panic and adrenaline, all in a split second. Breathless and helpless, he momentarily forgets all his training. All of it. A decade and a half in the Navy, all his years in Five-0. It’s all gone for half a moment of pure terror, before logic takes over and he acclimates. Adjusts, Refocuses.

Even when it’s his partner’s life that hangs in the balance, Steve still manages to dig his heels in.

That is, until the quarantine incident, when for the first time in all the times Steve was faced with the possibility of losing Danny, it was then that the gap between their well-beings had been most apparent.

Under a collapsed building, with a motion-sensitive bomb between them, even in a dark basement in Colombia, Steve had a silent comfort buried under the recesses of his mind. A safety net, if you will.

If Danny dies, chances are, Steve’s not far behind.

But that morning at King’s Medical, when someone marched in with the intent of ending Danny and Danny alone, nothing, short of shooting himself in the chest, could've saved Steve from the aftermath.

He figured then that nothing else could possibly be worse than Danny dying in his arms, with him unable to follow.

(So of course, the world had to prove him wrong.)

All that terror, that chasm of uncertainty and hope and anger when you’re forced to set aside fear in order to stay sane and useful, is denied from Steve.

The moment he opens the door, on an otherwise normal Saturday morning, the world has already gone nine hours without Danny Williams.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Grace is numb by the time her mom finishes with her broken explanations. Numb and hollow.

It’s been over an hour since she last woke up, this time no longer in ICU. Her throat is dry, but so are her eyes, and the only thing that feels real is the pulsing ache at the pit of her stomach.

Her mother looks at her helplessly, and it will take days for Grace to fully understand why she keeps on waking up with just her mother in the room.

 

 

.

.

 

 

 _Car accident,_ Tani tells him.

Later on, she’ll tell people she drew the short stick, being the one assigned to knock on McGarrett’s door.

Steve knows she volunteered.

Danny was picking up Grace from a party. Sudden Rain. Slippery road.

Apparently, he was conscious enough to demand they get Grace out first. The front half of the car was hanging off the edge of the cliff, but Danny was in a better condition, the passenger side having sustained more damage from the impact. First responders would call it better chance of survival, but fathers don’t care about things like that.

They said Grace’s right shoe got stuck and was left in the car when it plummeted down, taking Danny with it.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Grace is five when Danno teaches her about friendship, and people.

She hates Mackenzie Brighton, who follows her around the playground and laughs when she pronounces words like her mom. Her hair is the same color as Aunt Stella’s, and Gracie doesn’t like her one bit.

Danno just laughs when she complains to him about it one evening, after dinner with ice cream because mommy is with Gran and Gramps in Inglan.

(She misses her mom, knows Inglan is far and _at least_ three bus rides away, Danno swears, but when she’s gone, her dad is home a lot, and Gracie likes it when her dad brushes her hair.)

He tells her maybe she should take one of the crayons Mackenzie Brighton keeps on offering, and invite her for a tea party sleepover sometime. He says being in New Jersey after living in Seattle just weeks ago must be hard for little Mackenzie, and she could surely use a friend. Grace pouts and pouts, but Danno just smiles over her loud protests of _‘but Danno!’_ and continues to braid her hair. Her favorite, with the ribbons and flowers mommy thinks will ruin her beautiful, dark hair.

The following Monday, Grace gives Mackenzie Brighton half a cookie, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

(Moving to Hawaii two years later makes them both cry so hard Grace thinks she’s gonna be sick. She doesn’t wanna say goodbye. Danno makes her a promise, and teaches her about postcards and letters the night before she leaves, and Grace realizes doesn’t have to.)

Her mommy makes friends with all sorts of people. Mothers at the academy. Step-Stan’s cousins. Hawaii’s local public figures. She is good at making conversations that are layered, and calculated. Not cold, but not too friendly, either. Supply and demand. Give and take.  Rachel Edwards has a childhood best friend who lives in Ireland, but the rest of the world who isn’t bound to her by blood or marriage, she keeps at arm’s length.

Gracie loves her mom, but she doesn’t always understand her.

Danno makes friends with all kinds of people, too. He greets half of Newark by name, and remembers the death anniversary of Mrs. Akamu’s husband. He shakes hands with fishermen the same way he does with Senator Jackson’s brother. He stops and crouches down next to tiny children, and before Grace can pick out a second magazine, he’s telling Miss Claudia May from Manoa pirate secrets and she’s calling him Detective Danno.

(He keeps his eyes tight for any signs of deception, but his heart open for everything else.)

Grace wonders how long it will take for her to have people who would readily walk through fire the way Auntie Kono, Uncle Chin, and the rest of Five-Ohana would for her father. The way Uncle Steve would kill for Danno.

It’s morbid, and a little sad, and she keeps those thoughts close to heart, when her nightlight is out and the master’s bedroom is shut. Grace knows they’d do almost anything for her, too. But before any of that, before Grace Williams became Gracie to half of HPD and three quarters of the Kelly-Kalakaua Clan, there was just Danny, and his big heart, and kind smile, and his profound understanding of Mackenzie Brighton.

 

 

.

.

 

 

 _That was September 11 th_.

If anybody had told Steve when he was younger, that he’d meet the love of his life at thirty-four, he’d have slugged them where they stood.

Some people live full lives by mid-thirties. A more ambitious squid can make Captain at thirty-four. His own mother had been pregnant with Mary at that age. And what does _l_ _ove of one’s life_ even mean? John McGarrett declared an elite, international spy the love his life, when Stevie asked his parents about marriage and anniversaries one Sunday morning. John McGarrett had been wrong.

(But still, at thirty-four, Detective Danny Williams aims a service pistol at him — going for a headshot, _the nerve_ — and Steve’s world changes forever.)

It takes him two years and a bomb to put a name to it — to that spark of excitement whenever he gets Danny riled up in an argument, the warmth in his partner’s touch that burns even through Kevlar, the constant _awareness_ of exactly where Danno is in every room — and the resignation in that little voice in his head just about knocks Steve breathless.

The realization itself doesn’t come as a surprise, no. It’s not an _‘oh shit, I’m in love with him’_ jolt, but a quiet surrender. Like he’s been thrashing and tossing for the past few months, and there’s really nothing else he can do but submit.

Steve is no fool.

He knows where he’s been heading for quite some time now. It blossomed after Meka Hanamoa, flared when he met Rachel, and griped him by the ankles at the wake of Matthew William’s lies. Steve burned with hope through hiking trips and easy flirting, and smarted with a hospital visit and an accidental glance at an incomplete transfer request form. Danny may have stayed and dragged a crack team to North Korea, but Steve had made up his mind.

(Whatever the nameless, relentless entity that thrived at the very center of his being, it will never see the light of day.)

 _That was September 11 th_.

Steve should’ve known he never really stood a chance.

 

 

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.

 

 

Grace wears white to the funeral.

It’s a sunny, Friday afternoon, much like how it had been that day, and her plain dress looks bright and misplaced next to her mom’s black Patou. Beside her, sits Clara Williams, who arrived yesterday with a quarter of the Williams family. Grandma only needed to hear Gracie’s voice over the phone to know that his son will be buried in Oahu. Grace doesn’t know a lot of things, has had more questions for the past few days than she’s ever had her entire life, but she knows that.

(She doesn’t cry when they lower the casket, doesn’t flinch when Grandma faints again, and doesn’t turn when Will squeezes her hand before his family left.)

She does, however, let Auntie Kono hold her like a child; she bends down to tie Sara’s shoelaces before she trips over a root, and lets her mom fuss over her for distraction. Grace has learned that ten years of marriage and memories don’t simply vanish, even after ten years apart.

She feels hollow the entire time, and only blinks a couple of times when she reads a message from Mackenzie. Grace wants to apologize for how distant she seemed throughout the phone call the previous night, but she can’t seem to find the words.

_We love you, Gracie._

That’s the thing. It doesn’t matter.

She’s aimless and _spent_ , and by the time she gets to the car, it takes half her remaining strength to swallow down the bitter taste of resentment when, even as they drive away, she still sees no sign of Uncle Steve.

 

 

.

.

 

 

He makes it three steps from the fridge when he hears a knock. In the four seconds it takes to reach the door, Steve runs through a list of all the possible people worried or angry or just plain stupid enough to show up at his house tonight.

It’s relatively short, so he almost drops the beer he’s holding when he sees who’s on the other side.

It’s Grace. Her usual neat hair is in disarray, framing her face which is still peppered with bruises and two butterfly bandages. It’s a clear, night sky, but across the threshold, his Gracie is standing with hunched shoulders, she might as well be soaking in the rain.

“Hey.”

It’s pathetic, as far as greetings go, but Steve’s free hand has an iron grip on the door knob, and his mind has none on anything resembling sensible. He hasn’t seen her up close since the night he snuck in her hospital room and stayed for the whole five minutes it took before everything just became too much. Now she’s fully conscious and right in front of him, and the relief that washes over him displaces the cocktail of other emotions he’s been accustomed to for the past few days.

“Can I come in?” she asks, with a hint of hesitation that makes Steve’s head ache. “I hope it’s not a bad time.”

Her politeness also takes his breath away. She’s there, grieving and no doubt in pain, but none of it takes away the gentleness that makes her Grace, and Steve finds himself humbled by it.

Fortunately, she takes his stupid nod without fuss, and moves to the direction of the couch without another word. There’s a long moment after that, when Steve just stands there, itching to put away the beer bottle but unable to let her out of his sight. When he finally settles for the nearest flat surface he could find, he puts it down and finds her staring at the papers on the center table.

“Oh, those are just…”

The rest of the words die in his throat. Grace is a smart kid; Steve has always been proud of how she’s grown into a perceptive and analytical young woman who absolutely takes no shit. The way she takes in all the things like puzzle pieces tells him she understands exactly what they’re for, and the look on her face is so familiar, so _achingly familiar_ , he’s thankful for the support of a chair before his knees give out.

“Why?”

She shifts her eyes straight ahead, the stubborn set to her jaw also a shadow of her dad’s it makes Steve’s pulse pick up. For a moment, he wonders if she’s talking about the files, before she continues.

“Everyone was there. Stan. Gabby. Uncle Max. Even cousin Jeremy who swore he hated Danno ever since he stuck his bicycle to a tree for making me cry.”

Her voice is impossibly small, and more than ever, Steve feels the distance between them, the void in the shape of her father.

“Everyone but you.”

Grace’s words pry open the barriers that kept his exhaustion at bay, and he gasps through the adrenaline crash. He finds himself reeling against all the reactions he’s successfully avoided for so long, but since he’s never been able to deny Gracie anything, Steve soldiers on. He walks around the chair and sits to the right of the first little girl he’s loved since Mary.

“He’s not there,” he tells her, when he finds his voice again.

Danny’s not there, but Steve was. He waited after single person left, waited some more, and dragged himself across the cemetery grounds. He honestly didn’t know what he was expecting, other than grass and dirt and the slab of stone that had his partner’s name on it.

“He’s just…not there.”

Seeing the fresh grave for himself didn’t make it all real. It wasn’t cathartic, or helpful. It changed nothing. Nothing at all.

Still, he doesn’t tell Grace any of this. He simply watches as she silently picks up one file from the stack. It’s a brown, manila folder, with forms and photos Steve’s sure are already burned to his retinas. It also contains a copy of the accident report, but he doesn’t make any move to stop her from opening it.

He does, however, note the lack of surprise.

“I have one,” she says to him. “A copy. In my room.”

In his chair, Steve cycles through shock, anger, and pride, all in the span of a heartbeat.

“I asked Will when he came to visit. He was the only one, for a while.”

Steve heard about it, even in the state he was in. Kono called from a disposable phone, so he would be forced to pick up. What followed was a series of angry hissing, in English and Hawaiian, about how Rachel forbade anyone from visiting Grace until she deems her daughter well-adjusted enough with her transfer from ICU. He remembers hearing Adam’s, Chin’s, and Abby’s voices in the background, but Steve ended the call before anyone else can wrangle the phone from Kono.

It was when he had his own clandestine visit, and it didn’t take long for Steve to understand why Rachel did what she did.

“I want in, Uncle Steve.” Grace’s grip on the folder tightens. “I wanna know what you have.”

Steve wants to say no. He, of all people, understands what Grace is feeling right now. He is intimately familiar with chasing those responsible for taking one’s father away, and he wants none of it near Grace. He has never imagined putting her in the same path that led him to losing so many people and so much of himself, but something inside him fears he has to.

Because the glint in her eyes is also something he knows all too well. It’s the burning need for someone to blame, a quiet desperation to fill the sudden chasm ripped open by a loss so grand, you can’t possibly be whole ever again.

Because if Grace accepts the accident report as it is, she’ll be left with no one to blame but herself.

 

 

.

.

 

 

In the end, it’s Uncle Chin who finds out.

Grace is surprised when, instead of going to Uncle Steve, he goes to her. He is gentle, and reasonable, and insists that he can’t watch her doing this to herself. He tells her she’s the only one who can convince Uncle Steve to stop, and he can’t go back to the Mainland until he knows they’re fine.

Uncle Chin forgives her, and pleads with her, and Grace wants nothing more than to shake him by the shoulders and _scream_.

She saw his eyes, when they finally visited her in the hospital. She saw all their eyes. She made them that way, took Danny Williams from them, and the love and comfort and patience they seem to have in spades for her should’ve been gone. She’s only an extension of their common denominator; the one person who held them all together is now _gone_.

Grace doesn’t realize she’s sobbing and shouting until her mom arrives and the look on her face tells her she’s heard it all.

“What on earth were you thinking!”

Her mom rages and rages, and for the first time in days, her eyes are alight with the fire that’s been snuffed out of them ever since Grace woke up in ICU.

“Sweetheart, you have to accept that it was an accident. Plain and simple.”

The words reach Grace with incredible resonance, and something ugly rises from the pit of her stomach.

“Simple? There’s nothing _simple_ about it, my dad’s gone!” She’s shaking, but she can’t seem to stop. “How can you stand there and act as if you expected this!”

It’s then that she finally sees it. The resignation. The guilt. In her mom’s eyes, is the culmination of years of frustration and tension and morbid anticipation. It makes Grace _sick._

“You know your father’s job, Grace. And the chances he took. We’ve always been prepared. This way, we have no one to blame—”

“Stop. Just— _stop_.”

Grace brings herself to her full height, and she has a brief moment to wonder if there's ever going to be a chance to go come from here.

“I knew what my dad was. I  _understood_ that. Did I worry? Of course. I worry all the time. That’s what you do, mom. You love and you worry. _Danno_ taught me that.” She is quickly gripped by a primal desire to leave, to run and never look back, but she has to make her mother _understand_. “But you never cross that line. Not when you love someone. You worry, but you _never cross that line._ So don’t you _dare_ tell me I should’ve expected this, or it should be easier. You’re a _coward_ when you decided stop loving dad just because you worried! I didn’t. I loved my dad, and now he’s gone.”

 

 

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It’s Kono who decks him, three sleepless nights after the funeral.

Steve can’t even remember what he said, what happened between blinking at Danny’s face on the monitor and turning just in time for his jaw to catch Kono’s left hook. She is so mad, she’s shaking, and Steve feels his anger leave his veins, to settle in a puddle at the bottom of his stomach, next to the shame.

“You shut up– let me _go_ , Lou!”

She’s struggling against the Captain’s hold, all bones and skin and rage, and nothing at all like the big shot federal recruit who left for the mainland. In Lou’s arms, she’s a rookie again, all impulse and righteousness.

Steve wonders if this is how they’re going to be now. If this is what grief has turned them into.

“He was _my_ family, too, in case you forgot!” She squares her shoulders when Lou finally lets her go. With one last look at the screens, at the mess he’s made, Kono delivers the final blow.  “Danny doesn’t just belong to you.”

Her words are still ringing in his ears, when Mary finds him two hours later.

“God, I haven’t been here in ages.”

Over the sound of waves crashing against the shore, Steve hears shuffling before Mary places herself next to him, in their own little paradise. Their secret spot in Kahana Bay, a childhood favorite, used to be so beautiful.

“I remember this place being so much bigger though,” Mary whispers, her presence warm and the only thing not suffocating him amidst the endless stretch of sand and sea.

_Stevie! Stevie, Look!_

It’s his sister’s embrace, her tiny arms suddenly so massive around him when he himself feels so small, that unlocks something inside Steve. With his legs folded and tucked under his chin like he’s sixteen all over again, his body spasms with a big, shuddering breath.

“I can’t live through this, Mare.” It sounds like defeat, like surrender, but the fight has all but left him. He just wants to close his eyes and fade with the breeze. “Not this one.”

 

 

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She’s speeding along Pali Highway in her mom’s car when her breathing changes.

_Fifty miles. Sixty. Seventy._

The green blur on either side of her could’ve been trees, but Grace is not entirely sure. Her vision starts to narrow down to a single point, to the endless gravel before her, and she takes a split second to consider which would hurt less: pinning herself to the side of the mountain, or driving the shiny Lincoln off the cliff.

It’s stupid, and reckless, and astoundingly hilarious, but her fingers have long since locked into the steering wheel. Her breath comes in short, sharp bursts. A mixture of adrenaline and madness.

_Seventy. Eighty._

She'll be in pain again, and she will bleed, but by god she’ll be with Danno.

_Eighty miles._

Her eyes flit to the side mirror, and whatever limbs left she can still feel freeze, as she catches a glimpse of something that she’ll recognize anywhere. _It can’t be_.

_Eighty. Seventy. Sixty._

The phantom of her dad’s black Camaro is the last thing she sees before she loses control of the wheel.

 

 

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It’s Rachel who opens the door, and Steve ignores the twisted lurch in his guts as he steps inside.

He has almost nothing in common with Rachel Hollander. She loves Earl Grey, Steve prefers Oolong. She wears signature clothes like second skin, when it took him years to even be comfortable in his dress blues. Rachel believes she alone knows what’s best for the people she loves, and she’d take that conviction to the grave. Steve looked and looked, but failed to find forgiveness for the mother who fancied herself justified in tearing her family apart.

“What do you want, Commander?”

But Rachel and Steve share the same weakness for pigtails and dopey smiles. They both have the same five-dollar hemp bracelet from Honolulu Country Fair. The headstrong schoolgirl from Bristol and Island Boy of Squad Thirteen both grew up into the kind of person whose heart skips a beat from a low, indulgent chuckle, and who is easily rendered breathless by blonds with clear, blue eyes and unwavering loyalty.

“Commander. _What_ are you doing here?”

It’s been a long time since she’s addressed him as such, but Steve takes comfort in it.

“Grace.”

Her posture is stiff, and the way she presses her lips in a tight, firm line tells him she’s not the least bit happy, but also not entirely surprised. He knows where Grace’s room is, has wanted to see her ever since he made sense of Chin’s phone call, but he doesn’t move. Steve figures he at least owes Rachel that.

“He loved you, you know.”

It takes a while for the haze in his brain to clear, but when it does, Steve’s vision tilts so suddenly, it hardly matters.

“What?”

“Daniel,” she tells him, seemingly unconscious and completely aware of his presence, both at the same time. “He cared about you more than his own safety. More than his own life.”

Her words reach Steve slowly, and his comprehension of every meaning, every implication, fails to be the reprieve he thinks Rachel intended them to be.

“Almost more than Grace.”

He’s panting by the time he reaches Grace’s door, his eyes burning along with every inch of his skin. Steve grants himself a few seconds to catch his breath.

_One-one thousand. Two-one thousand, Three-one thousand._

The burning eventually stops, when he turns the knob.

_Four-one thousand. Five-one thousand._

Grace’s room is empty.

 

 

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.

 

 

Everything hurts, but Grace doesn’t want to open her eyes.

She’s alive.

She’s alive, and she’s failed, and if she opens her eyes, it still won’t be her dad in front of her.

“Hey.” She feels a warm hand wrapping her twitching fingers, and Grace can longer stop the tears that slip to both sides of her face. when she finally lets the light in, she sees her Uncle Steve next to her bed. It’s enough to make her whimper. “It’s okay, Gracie. It’s okay. I got you.”

_I got you, Monkey. You’re good. You’ll be all right. I got you._

She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, with her crying for the first time in weeks, and her Uncle Steve holding her steady by the tips of her fingers.

“I don’t think my mom loved my dad.”

The sobs have already ceased, and she’s found her voice again. The words sound terrible out loud, like breathing life into a lifelong fear, and the startled look on her Uncle Steve’s face weakens her resolve.

“I don’t think she loved Danno at all.”

It sounds like the truth. The pulsing indignation inside her is more than happy to agree, but Uncle Steve just shakes his head.

“She did,” he says. His own voice is as quiet and fragile as it had been since the night of the funeral, but there’s something in it that makes Grace believe him. She realizes she’s always gonna believe him. “She does. Grief…People have different have different ways of dealing with grief, Gracie.”

He rubs slow and steady circles on her knuckles, just like he used to when she was little. “How can you be so sure?”

He shrugs, and Grace has never seen a shrug look so certain. So resolute.

“I don’t think there’s any way she couldn’t.”

She lets her gaze settle on her Uncle Steve’s eyes. As green as her Danno’s are blue. They stay fixed on her hand, still so tiny next to his, the entire time.

Suddenly, the words are pouring out before she can stop them.

“I don’t even remember why I wanted to go to that party. I don’t…I just can’t remember.” Will couldn’t even come, and she had a Lit homework due on Monday. “Danno showed up at ten, and I was glad because I was starting to get bored. And he just kept talking and talking, and I was tired. I wanted to take a nap, right, coz we were gonna have a movie marathon. All Denzel this time. Just a quick nap.”

_Whatever, Danno._

“I’m sorry, Gracie.”

She blinks, and when she looks up, her Uncle Steve already has tear in his eyes. No doubt in sympathy to the ones that won’t stop coming out of her own.

“I can’t live without my dad, Uncle Steve.”

 

 

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.

 

 

“Fifty-two hours.”

His coffee has long since turned cold, and Rachel’s tea even longer, but they hold on to their cups. Trembling hands have nothing else to do.

“I don’t remember the first fifty-two hours since they told me what happened.”

He’s not even sure if he said anything to Tani beyond the stupid _Hey_ when she came in. He didn’t go to the ME, nor storm HPD. He remembers _nothing._ Just the broken look on his rookie’s face, and her words, and that’s that.

“Fifty-two hours later, I wake up in a hotel room, and I feel nothing. Fifty-two hours. That’s over two days.” He turns to Rachel, but his eyes gloss over her face. “How the fuck does that happen?”

He never asked the front desk when they told him the room had been paid. He didn't even consider asking for camera footage.

He didn’t have to, because his mom still uses the same perfume.

“Danny wouldn’t like what you did. You and Grace.” Her voice is clipped, and Steve looks down, at her cup. Her nails are painted red. “I spoke with Chin and Captain Grover. Your investigation made quite a fuss.”

Steve looks at his own cup. Black. Two Sugars. He suddenly remembers that this is the woman who left Danny.

“Well, forgive me for giving a damn.”

It’s a low blow, he knows that. He can’t blame her, too. Not with how violently Grace reacted when she first came in. She’s lashing out.

“You know what he’s gonna say if he’s here.”

But Steve is, too.

“Well he’s not here, so he doesn’t get to say anything.”

God help him, he is.

 

 

.

.

 

 

The weekend before Grace and her dad fly for the Mainland to tour colleges, she asks her dad about Jersey.

Danno’s knife stops half an inch above the tomato, and he gives her a quizzical look.

So Grace elaborates. Her mom taught her to be succinct. To be brief and precise and straight to the point. Danno taught her to explain.

She asks her dad about what happens if she picks a college outside the islands. It’s a possibility. She’s been eyeing California. It’s far enough to give her freedom, but familiar enough to keep her sane. She tells her this, and asks about what happens after. Will he come back to New Jersey?

(Come back. It doesn’t occur to her that she doesn’t say come _home,_ until much, much later.)

The look on her dad’s face is something she’ll never forget.

Ashen. Then pensive. Then calm.

He’s smiling by the time he asks for the colander. Grace doesn’t even remember to wait for an answer.

 

 

.

.

 

 

“He was gonna stay.”

They’re going through their second stroll around the hospital garden when she looks up from her place on the wheelchair, and finally understands.

The realization hits Grace like a blow to the stomach, and she has to look down, let her hair hide her face, before she’s able to choke down the sob that bubbled up her chest. She braves through every other piece that falls into place, all at once, and the entire time, she keeps her eyes on her leg brace.

Love.

Uncle Steve loved her dad.

“Hmm?”

It’s suddenly unfair, all over again. Because she can’t apologize to him, can’t even bring herself to form the words. She can’t bear to see the forgiveness and the love and the comfort that she absolutely does not deserve.

How do you even apologize for taking away a person someone loves, when you loved that person too?

“College.” Uncle Steve blinks at her once, twice, but he doesn’t say anything. “No matter what it was I picked, he would’ve stayed.”

And Danno loved him, too.

Danno would've stayed.

Grace wonders what they’re going to do with that fact now.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Steve is standing in the middle of Danny’s empty house when he sees him.

It’s just a trick of the light, he tells himself. Over and over again, until he stops holding his breath in fear that the softest gasp will make his smiling face vanish in the warm, afternoon glow. It’s a wonderful mirage, but that’s all it is. A fever dream after so many sleepless nights.

“Danny.”

Still, it doesn’t stop him from moving forward, from reaching out like he is the ocean, and Danny Williams is the moon.

“Steve!”

Chin finds him in the exact same spot god knows how many hours later, his hands bleeding from the fragments of a broken beer bottle.

 

 

.

.

 

 

The thing that guts the most, that sends him down a rabbit hole of alternating numbness and sensory overload like clockwork every time he drags himself out of bed in the morning, is that there’s no one to blame.

No old enemy to hunt down. No leads to follow, no tracks to chase. No one to hold accountable but the rain, and the cliff, and life’s love affair with ripping everything good in Steve’s long, and threadbare life.

All his training. His skillset. The one thing on earth he’s good at. All of it useless in filling the gaping hole at the center of his chest.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Uncle Steve drives them both to the lookout the night before her graduation.

She’s been out of the hospital for two weeks, and has spent the last one in a blur of forms and exams and rehearsals, so she is glad for a moment to stop and breathe. Her driver, on the other hand, spends half the time staring at her new leg brace, and the other half trying not to catch her eyes.

It hurts, but Grace understands.

She’s just glad he still made time, even when it’s a bad day.

So she throws her worn apologies to the wind, and does the talking for both of them. She talks about therapy, and how her mom has been riding her ass about college applications. She tells him about Mackenzie, and how she’s arriving tomorrow for the big day. She mopes about the handsome, new History teacher who starts next school year, when she’s no longer in the school.

She tells him about the nightmares, and watches as he sits a little straighter, a little stiffer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, when they lapse into a silence neither of them can pretend is not defeating. They never had to deal with it, before. Used to be, they can barely catch a break when her dad was around. “I got nothing, Gracie. Nothing I can say, or do, to make you feel better.”

She looks at his growing beard, and the circles under his eyes that only turned darker ever since Aunt Mary and Joanie returned to the Mainland the week before.

When he drops her off that night, the hug he gives her is longer. A little tighter.

The next day, after the ceremony, she asks Will to drive her to Piikoi street. It’s funny how much a trend it’s turning out to be these days.

_Everyone but you._

The spare key is still where it used to be, and the door creaks with the same sound, still.

She’s not at all surprised when she finds the house empty, with nothing on the bed but a badge, a contract, and a letter.

 _Gracie,_ it says on the back of the envelope.

Doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

 

 

.

.

 

 

He calls Chin the morning before his flight.

He doesn’t tell him where’s he’s going, and Chin doesn’t ask.

“It won’t go away,” his friend says instead. What he told Grace still stands. There’s nothing anyone can say or do that will make them feel better. But Chin’s words still make him feel _something_. “It won’t go away, Steve. But you’ll learn to live with it.”

Steve suddenly remembers a handful of midnights in a diner, and his silent prayer, and the faith he placed on the healing power of coffee and friends.  He wonders about how much Chin knows.

“It won’t be easy, brah. Just easier.”

Chin promises to take care of everything, before he hangs up. Steve lets himself stay for a little while longer, before he makes his way to the truck, his boots heavier than when he arrived.

_Daniel Joshua Williams_

_Beloved son, father, and best friend_

It’s such a generic line, it doesn’t even come close to being enough.

But even after the hour he’s allowed himself to have is up, Steve still can’t come up with anything that might.

 

 

.

.

 

 

Grace stays in Hawaii.

The restaurant is hers, her mom gets pregnant, and she stays in Hawaii. In the morning, she makes herself dizzy studying business management and Italian recipes, and at night she shares some insights with her roommate who happens to be taking up forensic science. She spends weekends in Chinatown with Kamekona, and Nahele, and anyone else who’s not tied up in a case or dealing with leftover paperwork. She Skypes with Will at least four times a week, and tries to call every day, before she sleeps. Four months after her nineteenth birthday, Auntie Kono returns to lead Five-O, and after three more, they open _Corona._

The letter is still in her room in Kahala, unopened, but she sends one of her own. When it reaches San Francisco, Uncle Chin calls and thanks her for his own invite. He promises to make it to the opening, but doesn’t say anything about the other envelope she knows he received. The same way he doesn’t say anything else, when he hands over a wrapped box after her birthday dinner.

It’s a sail boat snow globe from Atlantic City.

“Your father’s proud of you, Gracie.”

She doesn’t cry about it, not anymore.  Instead, she snorts over the phone, and tells him Danno won’t be too happy if he knows exactly which name means _crown_ in Greek.

 

 

.

.

 

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for my son?”

Clara Williams fiddles with the sleeves of her sweater, her bony, weathered fingers betraying the anxiety her smile conceals. Even in the narrow balcony, the woman looks small, hunched over herself.

“He’ll be home soon. Him and his little brother.”

Steve takes one of her hands in his, and silently prays for strength.

“I’d love to, Mrs. Williams, but I’m afraid I have to go. I have homework, you see.”

 _I couldn’t live without my mom_ , Danny once told him. Now, looking at Clara, her gaze unsteady and her mind frozen in time, Steve wonders if Danny’s mom couldn’t quite figure out how to live without him, too.

“Oh yes, of course. No worries, my dear.” She gives him a soft smile, the same one her own son had whenever Gracie mentions homework. “I’m sure your mom is waiting for you at home, too.  Go on, then.  I’ll just tell my Daniel you came to visit.”

As he closes the door behind him, the nurse from his first visit sees Steve, and promptly recognizes him.

“Mr. McGarrett. Leaving so soon?”

“Yeah, I…Clara’s not feeling too well today. And I have somewhere to be.”

She smiles, sympathetic. “Where?”

His mind goes to the small, scented paper tucked inside his journal, and to the little girl waiting for him across the sea.

“Home.”

 

 

.

.

.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You,” he jams a finger at the general direction of his idiot partner, hoping against hope that it’s enough to get his point across, “ are an _animal.”_

“Come _on_ , Danny. It worked, didn’t it?”

It did, Danny has to agree. This time. And fortunately, no one got shot. But that doesn’t erase the fact that Danny’s blood pressure reached a no doubt record-breaking number, and the stunt Steve pulled just shaved off at least a decade of his lifespan. He can _feel_ the roots of his hair turning chalk white.

“Whatever, Steven. I’m going home.”

“Sure thing, Danno. Good luck with the party tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves off the smirk on the man’s face, but it’s too late. The scowl on his is already gone. “I should just be glad Grace is still letting me pick her up.”

He’s already on his way to the door when something clicks in his brain, and he spins to face Steve so fast, he feels his hair shake a little.

“Speaking of which; are you _sure_ you have a meeting with the governor tomorrow? You’re _positive_?”

Steve, the big freak, clocks the slight moment of imperfection displayed by his glorious mane, and lets his gaze linger on his head before flashing him an indulgent smile. Danny’s stomach does a little flip, but he pays it no mind. Nothing new.

“Just like I told you the last, I don’t know, _hundred_ times you asked: I have a meeting with the governor and the Chief of Police tomorrow. You have my girl all to yourself.”

Danny thinks he’ll never stop being surprised by how much his partner loves his child. How warm it makes him feel inside.

He finds he doesn’t mind it at all.

When Steve’s response sinks in, Danny feels himself relax a little. God knows the last thing he needs is Steven J. McGarrett watching him participate in the Valentines Basket Boys organized by Grace’s senior class. _Literally_ the last thing.

“But if you tell me what it is you’re so worked up about, I might reschedule.”

“No!” Danny almost jumps at his own voice, but recovers just in time to deflect Steve’s raised eyebrow. “That…that won’t be necessary.”

He waits a little longer, gives his pulse a chance to return to normal rate. Steve’s small smile, and the… _something_ in his eyes every time he’s reflected in them, doesn’t do much to help with that endeavor.

“Take care of yourself, Danno,” Steve calls out, before he can step out. “Say hi to Gracie for me.”

Danny fights the urge to roll his eyes. Grace texts Steve more than she does her own father, these days.

“Yeah, yeah.” This time, when he waves him goodbye, he doesn’t turn around. The guy doesn't need to see exactly how warm his face has become. “See you Monday, McGarrett.”

 

 

//end


End file.
